By Julio Godoy
PARIS, Sep 9 2003 (IPS)

Cancun, Mexico’s seaside resort where the ministerial summit of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) opens Wednesday, has become a political border dividing European governments from non-governmental organisations.

European governments are warning that a collapse of the WTO summit would be a major setback for world economic affairs, but most non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working on issues such as economic cooperation, the environment, and human rights think just the opposite: a failure at Cancun would be a good thing.

The NGOs have been holding demonstrations across Europe for weeks now to say that the WTO summit will do nothing to improve environmental and social standards.

NGOs such as the Confederation Paysanne, a farmers’ union that supports organic farming, Greenpeace, Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC, after its French name), and the public servants’ union SUD organised the first major demonstration in France August 8-10.

Close to 100,000 people – farmers, teachers, students, intellectuals, and union members – came together to discuss the NGO agenda for Cancun.

Leader of Confederation Paysanne José Bové urged the French government to reject the treaties to be discussed at Cancun. "One government can suspend the whole process," Bové said at a protest meeting. "May the French government have the courage to do so."

Bové, a veteran of Seattle and Genoa, will not be in Cancun because he faces a suspended prison sentence for destroying genetically modified plantations.. Instead, he will follow the WTO summit at Cancon, a small village in the south- west of France.

At a meeting held last week, Jacques Nikonoff, president of ATTAC also called for suspension of WTO negotiations until the effects of WTO decisions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are determined.

"The WTO and the governments in Europe and North America pretend that free trade benefits the Third World, but historic evidence suggests the opposite," Nikonoff said.

Other French activists accused European governments of taking a schizophrenic position towards the WTO.

"France is the home country to private water corporations such as Suez and Vivendi, which have been taking over water rights in Argentina, South Africa, and Indonesia among other countries of the South," says Yannick Jadot, campaign director at Greenpeace France. But at the same time French officials publicly speak of the WTO as a "terrible instrument of the transformation of the world into a merchandise," Jadot told IPS.

NGOs in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe have also been protesting against the WTO, and called for a collapse of negotiations at Cancun.

Last Saturday about 500 German NGOs gathered in Berlin to condemn the WTO as a non-democratic organisation. The German NGOs particularly accused the WTO of trying to push genetically modified organisms into Europe, and of failing to protect the agriculture of developing countries from subsidy- driven competition from richer industrialised nations.

"A second Seattle, a failure at the Cancun negotiations, wouldn’t be a bad thing," Peter Wahl from World Economy, Ecology and Development (WEED) told the Berlin meeting. "Maybe then the richest countries in Europe and North America would understand that they can no longer fob off Third World countries with peanuts."

In Italy, anti-globalisation protesters temporarily blocked access to Riva del Garda in the north where European Union foreign ministers were to meet Friday. Luca Casarini, leader of Italy’s so-called ‘Disobedient’ movement said the roads were blocked "to block the violence of liberalisation policies."

While NGOs, unions, and farmers’ organisations have been condemning the WTO summit, officials and corporate representatives have been arguing that the success of the meeting is necessary for world prosperity.

German finance and labour minister Wolfgang Clement spelt out where Germany’s interests lie in a statement last Saturday. "Germany as an export country has an extraordinary interest that Cancun succeed," he said. "A third of all workplaces in Germany depend on exports." Clement will be leading the German delegation to Cancun.

The French government has avoided open praise of the WTO and the Cancun summit, but managers of private enterprises working closely with the government have been saying how crucial the meeting is to them.

"Success at Cancun is necessary to launch new negotiations on the protection of private investment, reduction of customs controls, and transparency in public biddings," Jacques Desponts, commissioner for the WTO at the Movement of French enterprises and at the European Federation of Employers’ Organisations said in a statement. Business lobbies are clearly pushing for inclusion of these ‘new issues’ at the WTO.

The NGOs seem to have the backing of most people. In an opinion poll published in Paris Monday, 72 percent of the people said Third World countries will be losers in a process of economic globalisation.

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